Heretofore, H.264/AVC (Advanced Video Coding) has been known as a moving image encoding format (see NPL 1). Also, H.264/MVC (Multi-view Video Coding) has been known as an extending system of this H. 264/AVC (see NPL 2). With MVC, an arrangement has been employed wherein the image data of multi-view is collectively encoded. With MVC, multi-view image data is encoded as the image data of a single base view (base view) and the image data of one or more non-base views (non-base view).
Note that H.264/SVC (Scalable Video Coding) has also known as an extended format of this H.264/AVC (see NPL 3). SVC is a technique for encoding an image in a hierarchical manner. With SVC, the hierarchy is divided into a basic hierarchy (lowest hierarchical level) including image data necessary for decoding a moving image with the minimum quality, and an extended hierarchy (upper hierarchical level) including image data for enhancing the quality of a moving image by being added to this basic hierarchy.